Monday, September 21, 2009

Poking fun at homeopaths and those that follow the religion of homeopathy is an easy game: it's an 18th century quack medicine that requires laws of physics and chemistry to be binned in favour of a belief system based on anecdotes and a denial of evidence.

There is plenty to go at: the pills are nothing more than sugar and water, diluted to near infinity, the followers have an unwavering belief in the power of the magic pill and the theory of homeopathy is so topsy-turvy it requires a huge amount of hand-waving and circle-squaring to make any sense out of it.

Homeopathy treats the person, there is some evidence to suggest it can help a person manage the symptoms of acute fevers, sore throats and toothache, to chronic illnesses such as arthritis, eczema, asthma, anxiety and insomnia.

Note the modifiers "some evidence", "suggest", "help", "manage" and "symptoms" - even with these language modifiers in place, it's still stretching the truth.

The pinnacle of this confused comedy came last January, when Napiers Herb and Plant Remedies held a workshop called "Homeopathy for Families" workshop. The advert has since vanished but I blogged about it back in the day. The workshop cost £20, but delegates would receive

a complimentary bottle of the homeopathic remedy Arnica.

Imagine if Pfizer ran a similar scheme, giving away a bottle of Viagra to each delegate? It would be popular, sure, but wholly, wholly unethical, immoral, and illegal.

I made the MHRA aware of this - and was faced with another crazy dichotomy in the up-is-down world of homeopathy. MHRA decided that because the product isn't licensed as a medicine,

the restriction on the distribution of free samples therefore did not apply

Since then, they have completely revamped their website, bringing in a ChiroMatrix, a "leader in Chiropractic website design" with the strapline "Raising healthier families".

This is quite a subtle but interesting shift happening within chiropractic - Chiropractors are salespeople, and as any sales guru will tell you , integrating your business with your client as much as possible makes repeat business more likely and therefore the business increases profitability. No longer are chiros happy to hand wave and back-crack, if they can peddle a philosophy of constant need, regular checkups, and a long-term 'wellness plan', they are on their way to the bank because:

Every person is unique, therefore everyone requires a customised wellness plan. The purpose of our wellness program is for you to achieve good spinal alignment, have a healthy diet, exercise, and maintain a positive mental state.

Long termism, think more of the model of the dentist, rather than the doctor.

Chiropractic does not 'cure' anything! If you are looking for a list of symptoms that Chiropractic has been shown to 'cure' then you will just end up more confused than when you started.

No, you'll end up realising that there is no real evidence that chiropractic has any effect over placebo or similarly administered therapy. But they wouldn't say that, now would they? They'd rather call you 'confused'. I can understand how someone would be confused - here they repeat the 'chiropractic has never cured anyone of anything' line then one paragraph later state

There are many 'conditions' that Chiropractic care has shown to provide assistance with.

- there's glory for you!

Phase 2 is Corrective Care. Bearing in mind the push for repeat business, how does this sit with you:

In order to prevent a rapid recurrence of symptoms, it is often necessary to continue receiving care even though your symptoms are gone.

Nice little earner - a therapy which does nothing will continue to do nothing long after whatever it was it was supposed to do is not even needed! Taking a leaf out of the homeopaths book, they have the 'heads-I-win-tails-you-lose' argument -

Do not be discouraged if you have mild flare-ups in your symptoms on occasion. This is normal.

Homeopaths have a similar get-out clause - called aggravation. i.e. if the problem gets better it shows the sugar pill is working, if the problem gets worse, it still shows the sugar-pill is working. Similarly with Chiropractic, if the pain goes, it was due to chiropractic, if it doesn't that in no way means that the therapy is not beneficial - how can you lose! As sugar on top,

this phase of your care may last anywhere from a few months to a couple of years.

When you make routine chiropractic care a part of your lifestyle, you avoid many of the aches and pains that so many people suffer through, your joints will last longer and you will be able to engage in more of the activities you love.

A completely unfalsifiable statement, but a slick sales ploy nonetheless.

It turns out that

Some of our offices are equipped with the very latest in technology designed to non-invasively test your nervous system very accurately. This technology uses a number of cutting edge techniques to give you a very detailed report on the integrity of your spine and nerves. These systems are called the 'Discovery Insight' or the 'Neuro-Infiniti' - please ask at reception about what technologies apply to you.

Doesn't that all sound very sciencey and exciting! Here is a bit more information on the Discovery Insight Subluxation Station. (Bear in mind, subluxations are a very undefined woolly concept in chiropractic, with no real agreement about what they are, so how anything can 'detect' them is a mystery). From the ad, it was used by NASA - oooooh.

Except it wasn't, as they've distanced themselves from it. Indeed, the Chiropractic Journal has launched an investigation regarding the sales practices of the companies behind such machines. Without a hint of irony they state:

The Chiropractic Journal has 23- year history of representing doctors of chiropractic and watching their backs. We will not sit by and see doctors taken advantage of by charismatic salesmen concerned and motivated purely by profit.

Spoing!

One last bit on Glasgow Chiropractic, in case you had thought they had launched the "cure nothing/heal the person" Chiropractic 2.0 free of therapeutic indications, here is a photo of the Glasgow Chiropractic stand in an East Kilbride shopping centre, complete with old school (and removed from their website) claims of colic.

I'll be sure to let the Advertising Standards Authority know.

So either their stand or the website is talking rubbish. I reckon it's both.

Keep Libel Laws out of Science

About Me

Who I am is largely irrelevant, and indeed so are most of my thoughts.
Nonetheless, it winds me up that I am supposed to swallow half-truths and untruths relating to scientific claims emanating directly from media sources and indirectly from people who haven't a clue what they're talking about.
Look, you've got me started.
(You can email me at thinkingisdangerousblog AT googlemail DOT com.)